Belgium Starts Building Rentel Offshore Wind Farm

Only a few days after the final turbine was installed at the Nobelwind offshore wind farm in Belgium, works on setting up a further array of wind turbines in the Belgian part of the North Sea started. Namely, the construction of the Rentel offshore wind farm has begun, according to the project’s social media pages. 

The Rentel wind farm will comprise 42 Siemens D7 type wind turbines, each with an individual installed capacity of 7.35MW, installed on monopile foundations approximately 40km off the coast of Ostend. The project is being constructed from the Port of Ostend, where the operational management of the wind farm will also be based.

Rentel is the fifth offshore wind farm to be constructed within the Belgian North Sea.

The project is being developed by Rentel NV, a consortium of eight Belgian shareholders, including Otary Offshore Energy, DEME Group and Elicio NV.

DEME, with its subsidiaries GeoSea and Tideway, is the Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Installation (EPCI) contractor for the wind farm, and has awarded Sif and Smulders to manufacture the wind turbine foundations. STX France will deliver the offshore substation, Prysmian is in charge of supplying the inter-array cables, while ABB will provide the export cable system.

The first Rentel turbines are expected to deliver power to the Belgian grid by mid-2018, while the entire offshore project is planned to become fully operational by the end of 2018.